The whole problem with the immigration debate is that it's largely a symptom of our underlying problems rather than a cause. If we had 1 - a skilled, motivated native workforce & 2 - sufficient workers right and minimum pay legislation to prevent a 'race to the bottom', then immigration wouldn't be an issue (for the local workforce).
If you read that article there's no explanation for why the firm couldn't employee a British web developer - it's not like there are a shortage of IT professionals in the UK. In fact there are few reasons why most of these jobs couldn't be filled by British people if they were trained properly. Of course from a company perspective it makes sense to just employee the already qualified Indian.
The logical conclusion from the above would be to restrict immigration but there is another point - if you stop these firms from employing expat workers who are already trained what is to stop the entire company moving somewhere else? Sure there are some jobs that need to be done in the UK but there are an awful lot that don't.
There is nothing you can do, not just the UK but for much of the world. This is one of the effects of globalisation. Labour is now global. Capital is now global. Capital flight can occur faster than you can blink.
There is no point in harping on some bygone era, where extensive labour and capital controls exists. You could still enact them but there would be completely no point. Just like you can write a letter by hand or you could just use email. If there is someone to blame, it would be the advance of technology and modern communications/transportation.
One thing I've never understood is that people are always harking on about immigrants damaging our society but don't seem to have a problem with someone like Rupert Murdoch (who's not even a British citizen) owning significant chunks of our media, and then using his papers to go on about immigration!
There might be extreme examples in the realms of rocket science and brain surgery but by and large I don't buy the notion that we can't find the skills unless we look outside of an EU population totalling more than 500 million people when it comes to jobs.
That just smacks of businesses being crap/lazy at advertising and relying on the workers seeking them rather than the other way around.
If we have a skills shortage in this country then first and foremost questions need to asked about what skills we are teaching our kids and that problem addressed. If we need engineers train more engineers and fewer sociologists or whatever.
For years many people have been saying we need fewer kids studying 'ologies' and more 'proper' skill based apprenticeships and for years those people have been lambasted by a liberal elite for doing so. If, as the gist of this thread implies, the future of our economy requires Sudanese migrants to fill gaps in the employment market then I know which side of the aforementioned argument I agree with. Such gaps should only ever appear by exception - not as a rule, and where they do appear should only be filled with temporary contracts if you've got to look outside the EU.
The EU represents nearly 10% of the global population and in theory all 500 million of them could, perfectly legitimately, move here tomorrow, take all the jobs and form orderly queues at Western Unions shipping all their disposable income out of the UK economy and back home. If that alone isn't an immigration policy with the potential to sink a country I don't know what is.
One thing I've never understood is that people are always harking on about immigrants damaging our society but don't seem to have a problem with someone like Rupert Murdoch (who's not even a British citizen) owning significant chunks of our media, and then using his papers to go on about immigration!
If he owns it, and in some cases has built it from the bottom up, what makes you think it's "our" media? Just because it's based here in the UK doesn't make it ours. Do you think all the foreign embassies in London are ours too?
The EU represents nearly 10% of the global population and in theory all 500 million of them could, perfectly legitimately, move here tomorrow, take all the jobs and form orderly queues at Western Unions shipping all their disposable income out of the UK economy and back home. If that alone isn't an immigration policy with the potential to sink a country I don't know what is.
That's like saying there are 60 million people in the UK and what is to stop them all deciding to move to St Ives? Although I agree that allowing full access to Eastern European immigration was a mistake I don't think we have too much to fear from an invasion of French/German/Italian/Dutch etc etc
That's like saying there are 60 million people in the UK and what is to stop them all deciding to move to St Ives? Although I agree that allowing full access to Eastern European immigration was a mistake I don't think we have too much to fear from an invasion of French/German/Italian/Dutch etc etc
It was an extreme argument I know but look at what happened with the numbers of Polish that flocked here. The government estimated in the tens of thousands and they turned up by the million.
When your economy is as ours once was you are bound to attract economic migrants.
You jokingly mention invasions of French and Germans.
There was a French economist on the radio the other week and he came out with a statistic about France with regard to population density..
London would be the eighth largest city in France by population of French people
If he owns it, and in some cases has built it from the bottom up, what makes you think it's "our" media? Just because it's based here in the UK doesn't make it ours. Do you think all the foreign embassies in London are ours too?
Well Thatcher basically let him increase his share in turn for support so he hasn't built all of it up. I think he should be forced to sell off at least one paper and have his BskyB bid stopped completely.
Whatever way you look at it you have a malign foreign influence directly affecting our society with Murdoch. Kinda like these pesky immigrants
I don't really get the comparison between foreign embassies either.
If I went to the U.S to study at a University would I be allowed to stay on in the U.S past the end of the course? I don't think so.
So why should it be allowed to happen here?
Also with 2.5 million unemployed in this country it is about time that those were given priority in being given work over someone who has been here five minutes.
According to this report, letting them in is causing problems for UK students AND industry. Link
But the Higher Education Commission, an independent group of education and business leaders, warns that the UK's current system seems to neglect UK students and instead is driven by universities wanting to recruit overseas students who pay high levels of tuition fees.
It says this risks making the UK the "education outsourcing capital of the world" - training international students rather than providing home-grown talent for UK firms.
Without an expansion of UK postgraduate students, it will mean UK firms will have to recruit more staff from overseas - or even have to re-locate to countries with a higher skilled workforce, the report says.
This is what happens when you create a policy to appease the Tory Newspapers rather than look deeper at the problems with immigration and the real issues behind those problems.
Traditionally much of the opposition to the the EU has come from the left because they believed business would use it to ship in workers from all over the place and so create a cheap labour pool. I am not entirely convinced that the company mentioned would not be able to fill the post by recruiting locally and doing a bit of training. IBM, for example, have been laying people off and shipping their jobs to Poland,
According to this report, letting them in is causing problems for UK students AND industry. Link
Perhaps the education system needs a good kick up the backside, so that those leaving at 16/18 leave with the pre-requisite skills and qualifications.
Then employers could recruit and train them earlier. it would also mean that a % wouldn't find themselves saddled with debt and a degree that doesn't open doors as they were originally promised.
It would also help if the true cost of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries was actually revealed. not the nirvana type spreadsheets used to entice company investors.
Traditionally much of the opposition to the the EU has come from the left because they believed business would use it to ship in workers from all over the place and so create a cheap labour pool. I am not entirely convinced that the company mentioned would not be able to fill the post by recruiting locally and doing a bit of training. IBM, for example, have been laying people off and shipping their jobs to Poland,
That's the entire point of globalisation. Where labour and capital are completely mobile. Why pay someone more? This is occuring throughout the world.
Theresa May faces pressure to water down Tory election pledge to reduce migrants to 'tens of thousands'
Home secretary Theresa May is facing a growing coalition revolt about the government's controversial target to slash net immigration, amid growing business anger about the impact of the policy on economic growth.
The promise to cut net immigration to "tens of thousands" was a key plank of the Tories' election platform, but a cross-party alliance of business secretary Vince Cable and universities minister David Willetts is urging David Cameron to force May to water down the pledge.
The chancellor, George Osborne, is also increasingly sympathetic to business concerns about the regime, according to Whitehall insiders, who say the prime minister held a meeting with May in late October to discuss whether the target could be gracefully abandoned.
Relations between the Home Office and the Department for Business are notoriously spiky, but have reached a new low in recent months.
One option favoured by Cable and Willetts, and backed by MPs on the business select committee, would be to separate foreign students from total net migration. Analysts say the total figure is a very blunt measure, because not only does it include students, it varies according to how many British people emigrate.
Oh well, UKIP here I come! Sorry Dave but if your no longer a real Conservative, I will have to take my vote elsewhere. Who cares if Labour wins, what difference will it make.
If you seriously think, promoting gay marriage and dropping your immigration reduction policies are going to win you the next election your sadly going to be disappointed.
I suppose it was inevitable that the neo liberal elite would win in the end. There argument's are of course flawed and based on complete self interest, to the detriment of the country as a whole.
People who benefit from immigration always expect everybody else to pay for it.
This is what happens when you create a policy to appease the Tory Newspapers rather than look deeper at the problems with immigration and the real issues behind those problems.
it's news to me that the government has an immigration policy.
Oh well, UKIP here I come! Sorry Dave but if your no longer a real Conservative, I will have to take my vote elsewhere. Who cares if Labour wins, what difference will it make.
If you seriously think, promoting gay marriage and dropping your immigration reduction policies are going to win you the next election your sadly going to be disappointed.
I suppose it was inevitable that the neo liberal elite would win in the end. There argument's are of course flawed and based on complete self interest, to the detriment of the country as a whole.
People who benefit from immigration always expect everybody else to pay for it.
Neo liberal elite is a new one on me.
I have mixed feelings about immigration, but I do agree with your point that those who preach open borders are most often the people whose lives are totally unaffected by population change.
Comments
There is nothing you can do, not just the UK but for much of the world. This is one of the effects of globalisation. Labour is now global. Capital is now global. Capital flight can occur faster than you can blink.
There is no point in harping on some bygone era, where extensive labour and capital controls exists. You could still enact them but there would be completely no point. Just like you can write a letter by hand or you could just use email. If there is someone to blame, it would be the advance of technology and modern communications/transportation.
This is the new world.
Adapt or die.
That just smacks of businesses being crap/lazy at advertising and relying on the workers seeking them rather than the other way around.
If we have a skills shortage in this country then first and foremost questions need to asked about what skills we are teaching our kids and that problem addressed. If we need engineers train more engineers and fewer sociologists or whatever.
For years many people have been saying we need fewer kids studying 'ologies' and more 'proper' skill based apprenticeships and for years those people have been lambasted by a liberal elite for doing so. If, as the gist of this thread implies, the future of our economy requires Sudanese migrants to fill gaps in the employment market then I know which side of the aforementioned argument I agree with. Such gaps should only ever appear by exception - not as a rule, and where they do appear should only be filled with temporary contracts if you've got to look outside the EU.
The EU represents nearly 10% of the global population and in theory all 500 million of them could, perfectly legitimately, move here tomorrow, take all the jobs and form orderly queues at Western Unions shipping all their disposable income out of the UK economy and back home. If that alone isn't an immigration policy with the potential to sink a country I don't know what is.
If he owns it, and in some cases has built it from the bottom up, what makes you think it's "our" media? Just because it's based here in the UK doesn't make it ours. Do you think all the foreign embassies in London are ours too?
That's like saying there are 60 million people in the UK and what is to stop them all deciding to move to St Ives? Although I agree that allowing full access to Eastern European immigration was a mistake I don't think we have too much to fear from an invasion of French/German/Italian/Dutch etc etc
It was an extreme argument I know but look at what happened with the numbers of Polish that flocked here. The government estimated in the tens of thousands and they turned up by the million.
When your economy is as ours once was you are bound to attract economic migrants.
You jokingly mention invasions of French and Germans.
There was a French economist on the radio the other week and he came out with a statistic about France with regard to population density..
London would be the eighth largest city in France by population of French people
apart from leaving the eu you mean
Well Thatcher basically let him increase his share in turn for support so he hasn't built all of it up. I think he should be forced to sell off at least one paper and have his BskyB bid stopped completely.
Whatever way you look at it you have a malign foreign influence directly affecting our society with Murdoch. Kinda like these pesky immigrants
I don't really get the comparison between foreign embassies either.
If I went to the U.S to study at a University would I be allowed to stay on in the U.S past the end of the course? I don't think so.
So why should it be allowed to happen here?
Also with 2.5 million unemployed in this country it is about time that those were given priority in being given work over someone who has been here five minutes.
Link
Traditionally much of the opposition to the the EU has come from the left because they believed business would use it to ship in workers from all over the place and so create a cheap labour pool. I am not entirely convinced that the company mentioned would not be able to fill the post by recruiting locally and doing a bit of training. IBM, for example, have been laying people off and shipping their jobs to Poland,
Then employers could recruit and train them earlier. it would also mean that a % wouldn't find themselves saddled with debt and a degree that doesn't open doors as they were originally promised.
It would also help if the true cost of outsourcing jobs to foreign countries was actually revealed. not the nirvana type spreadsheets used to entice company investors.
That's the entire point of globalisation. Where labour and capital are completely mobile. Why pay someone more? This is occuring throughout the world.
Oh well, UKIP here I come! Sorry Dave but if your no longer a real Conservative, I will have to take my vote elsewhere. Who cares if Labour wins, what difference will it make.
If you seriously think, promoting gay marriage and dropping your immigration reduction policies are going to win you the next election your sadly going to be disappointed.
I suppose it was inevitable that the neo liberal elite would win in the end. There argument's are of course flawed and based on complete self interest, to the detriment of the country as a whole.
People who benefit from immigration always expect everybody else to pay for it.
it's news to me that the government has an immigration policy.
Neo liberal elite is a new one on me.
I have mixed feelings about immigration, but I do agree with your point that those who preach open borders are most often the people whose lives are totally unaffected by population change.